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But he drew her back against the cushions and asked her name, and she told him; and he inquired her age, and she told him; and he had then two beautiful words that came easily to his tongue. He repeated them again and again:

“Lucia ... l’il Lucia.... Twelve.... Twelve.” Musical phrases they were, dropping from his lips, and to the child who heard her name pronounced so lovingly, they were the lost heights of melody. She clung to him, and he to her. She held his strong arm in both of hers as they crouched on the divan, and nestled her cheek against his coat.

Well ... he took her home to his wretched room.

“Li’l Lucia, come-a-home ... Lucia.”

His heart was on fire. As they slipped out of the noisomeness into the night air and crossed the West India Dock Road into Pennyfields, they passed unnoticed. It was late, for one thing, and for another ... well, nobody cared particularly. His blood rang with soft music and the solemnity of drums, for surely he had found now what for many years he had sought—his world’s one flower. Wanderer he was, from Tuan-tsen to Shanghai, Shanghai to Glasgow, Cardiff ... Liverpool ... London. He had dreamed often of the women of his native land; perchance one of them should be his flower. Women, indeed, there had been. Swatow ... he had recollections of certain rose-winged hours in coast cities. At many places to which chance had led him a little bird had perched itself upon his heart, but so lightly and for so brief a while as hardly to be felt. But now—now he had found her in this alabaster Cockney child. So that he was glad and had great joy of himself and the blue and silver night, and the harsh flares of the Poplar Hippodrome.